Chapter 4

The express allusion to Thuringia and Saxony is remarkable in the following lines of a poem that seems to have been composed soon after the year 1200, Reinh. F. 302; the wolf sees a goat on a tree, and exclaims:

ich sihe ein obez hangen, I see a fruit hanging,

ez habe hâr ode borst; That it has hair or bristles;

in einem heiligen vorste In any holy forest.

ze Düringen noch ze Sachsen Of Thuringia nor of Saxony

enkunde niht gewahsen There could not grow

bezzer obez ûf rîse. Better fruit on bough.

The allusion is surely to sacrificed animals, or firstfruits of the chase, hung up on the trees of a sacred wood? Either the story is based on a more ancient original, or may not the poet have heard tell from somewhere of heathenish doings going on in his own day among Saxons and Thuringians? (see Suppl.).

And in other poems of the Mid. Ages the sacredness of the ancient forests still exerts an after-influence. In Alex. 5193 we read 'der edele walt frône' [[the noble, holy woods]]; and we have inklings now and again, if not of sacrifices offered to sacred trees, yet of a lasting indestructable awe, and the fancy that ghostly beings haunt particular trees. Thus, in Ls. 2, 575, misfortune, like a demon, sat on a tree; and in Altd. w. 3, 161 it is said of a hollow tree:

dâ sint heiligen inne, There are saints in there,

die hærent aller liute bet. (16) That hear all people's prayers (see Suppl.).

Still more unmistakably does this forest cultus prevail in the North, protected by the longer duration of heathenism. The great sacrifice at Lêdera described by Dietmar (see p. 48) was performed in the island which, from its even now magnificent beech-woods, bore the name of Sælundr, sea-grove, and was the finest grove in all Scandinavia. The Swedes in like manner solemnized their festival of sacrifice in a grove near Upsala; Adam of Bremen says of the animals sacrificed: Corpora suspenduntur in lucum qui proximus est templo; is enim lucus tam sacer est gentibus, ut singulae arbores ejus ex morte vel tabo immolatorum divinae credantur. Of Hlöðr Heiðreksson we are told in the Hervararsaga cap. 16 (fornald. sög. 1, 491), that he was born with arms and horse in the holy wood (â mörk hinni helgu). In the grove Glasislundr a bird sits on the boughs and demands sacrifices, a temple and gold-horned cows, Sæm. 140-1. The sacred trees of the Edda, Yggdrasil and Mîmameiðr, Sæm. 109, hardly need reminding of.

Lastly, the agreement of the Slav, Prussian, Finnish and Celtic paganisms throws light upon our own, and tends to confirm it. Dietmar of Merseburg (Pertz 5, 812) affirms of the heathen temple at Riedegost: quam undique sylva ab incolis intacta et venerabilis circumdat magna; (ibid. 816) he relates how his ancestor Wibert about the year 1008 rooted up a grove of the Slavs: lucum Zutibure dictum, ab accolis ut deum in omnibus honoratum, et ab aevo antiquo nunquam violatum, radicitus eruens, sancto martyri Romani in eo ecclesiam construxit. Zutibure is for Sveti bor = holy forest, from bor (fir), pine-barren; a Merseburg document of 1012 already mentions an 'ecclesia in Scutibure,' Zeitschr. f. archivkunde, 1, 162. An ON saga (Fornm. sög. 11, 382) names a blótlundr (sacrificial grove) at Stræla, called Böku. Helmold 1, 1 says of the Slavs: usque hodie profecto inter illos, cum cetera omnia communiaa sint cum nostris, solus prohibetur accessus lucorum ac fontium, quos autumant pollui christianorum accessu. A song in the Königinhof MS. p. 72 speaks of the grove (hain, Boh. hai, hag, Pol. gay, Sloven. gaj; conf. gaius, gahajus, Lex Roth. 324, Kaheius, Lex Bajuv. 21, 6) from which the christians scared away the holy sparrow.(17) The Esth. sallo, Finn. salo means a holy wood, especially a meadow with thick underwood;

The national god Tharapila is described by Henry the Letton (ad. ann. 1219): in confinio Wironiae erat mons et silva pulcherrima, in quo dicebant indigenae magnum deum Osiliensium natum qui Tharapila (18) vocatur, et de loco illo in Osiliam volasse,----in the form of a bird? (see Suppl.). To the Old Prussians, Romove was the most sacred spot in the land, and a seat of the gods; there stood their images on a holy oak hung with cloths. No unconsecrated person was allowed to set foot in the forest, no tree to be felled, not a bough to be injured, not a beast to be slain. There were many such sacred groves in other parts of Prussia and Lithuania. (19)

The Vita S. Germani Autisiodorensis (b. 378, d. 448) written by Constantius as early as 473 contains a striking narrative of a peartree which stood in the middle of Auxerre and was honored by the heathen. (20) As the Burgundians did not enter Gaul til the beginning of the 5th century, there is not likely to be a mixture in it of German tradition. But even if the story is purely Celtic, it deserves a place here, because it shows how widely the custom prevailed of hanging the heads of sacrificial beasts on trees. (21) Eo tempore (before 1400) territorium Autisiodorensis urbis visitatione propria gubernabat Germanus. Cui mos erat tirunculorum potius industriis indulgere, quam christianae religioni operam dare. is ergo assidue venatui invigilans ferarum copiam insidiis atque artis strenuitate frequentissime capiebat. Erat autem arbor pirus in urbe media, amænitate gratissima: ad cujus ramusculos ferarum ab eo deprehensarum capita pro admiratione venationis nimiae dependebant. Quem celebris ejusdem civitatis Amator episcopus his frequens compellebat eloquiis: 'desine, quaeso, vir honoratorum splendidissime, haec jocularia, quae Christianis offensa, Paganis vero imitanda sunt, exercere. hoc opus idololatriae cultura est, non christianæ elegantissimae disciplinae.' Et licet hoc indesinenter vir deo dignus perageret, ille tamen nullo modo admonenti se adquiescere voluit aut obedire. vir autem domini iterum atque iterum eum hortabatur, ut non solum a consuetudine male arrepta discederet, verum etiam et ipsam arborem, ne Christianis offendiculum esset, radicitus exstirparet. sed ille nullatenus aurem placidam applicare voluit admonenti. In hujus ergo persuasionis tempore quodam die Germanus ex urbe in praedia sui juris discessit. tunc beatus Amator opportunitatem opperiens sacrilegam arborem cum caudicibus abscidit, et ne aliqua ejus incredulis esset memoria igni concremandam illico deputavit. oscilla (22) vero, quae tanquam trophaea cujusdam certaminis umbram dependentia ostentabant, longius a civitatis terminis projici praecipit. Protinus vero fama gressus suos ad aures Germani retorquens, dictis animum incendit, atque iram suis suasionibus exaggerans ferocem effecit, ita ut oblitus sanctae religionis, cujus jam fuerat ritu atque munere insignitus, mortem beatissimo viro minitaret.  



ENDNOTES:

16. From the notion of a forest temple the transition is easy to paying divine honours to a single tree. Festus has: delubrum fustis delibratus (staff with bark peeled off) quem venerabantur pro deo. Names given to particular trees are at the same time names of goddesses, e.g. ON. Hlin, Gnâ. It is worthy of notice, that the heathen idea of divine figures on trees has crept into christian legends, so deeply rooted was tree worship among the people. I refer doubters to the story of the Tyrolese image of grace, which grew up in a forest tree (Deutsche sagen, no. 348). In Carinthia you find Madonna figures fixed on the trees in gloomy groves (Sartoris reise 2, 165). Of like import seems to be the descriptions of wonderful maidens sitting inside hollow trees, or perched on the boughs (Marienkind, hausmächen no. 3. Romance de la infantina, see ch. XVI.). Madonna in the wood, Mar. legend. 177. Many oaks with Madonna in Normandy, Bosquet 196-7.  (back)

17. Brzetislav burnt down the heathen groves and trees of the Bohemians in 1093, Pelzel 1, 76. The Poles called a sacred grove rok and uroczysko, conf. Russ. róshtcha, grove [root rek rok = fari, fatum; róshtcha is from rostí, rastí = grow]. On threat of hostile invasion, they cut rods (wicie) from the grove, and sent them round to summon their neighbours. Mickiewicz 1, 56.  (back)

18. Conf. Turupid in Fornm. sög. 11, 385; but on Slav nations conf. Schiefner on Castrén 329.  (back)

19. Joh. Voigts gesch. Preussens 1, 595-597.  (back)

20. Acta sanctor. Bolland. July 31. p. 202; conf. Legenda aurea, cap. 102.  (back)

21. Huic (Marti) praedae primordia vovebantur, huic truncis suspendebantur exuviae, Jornandes cap. 5.  (back)

22. Virg. Georg. 2, 388: tibique (Bacche) oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu. In the story, however, it is not masks that are hung up, but real heads of beasts; are the ferarum imagines in Tac. Hist. 4, 22 necessarily images? Does oscilla mean capita oscillantia? It appears that when they hung up the heads, they propped open the mouth with a stick, conf. Isengr. 645. Reinardus 3, 293 (see Suppl.). Nailing birds of prey to the gate of a burg or barn is well known, and is practised to this day. Hanging up horses' heads was mentioned on p. 47. The Grîmnismâl 10 tells us, in Oðin's mansion there hung a wolf outside the door, and over than an eagle; were these mere simulacra and insignia? Witechind says, the Saxons, when sacrificing, set up an eagle over the gate: Ad orientalem portam ponunt aquilam, aramque Victoriae construents; this eagle seems to have been her emblem. A dog hung up over the threshold is also mentioned. Lex Alam. 102.  (back)